Swing States Don’t Want DHS to Protect Its Voting Machines

Some key swing states have declined an offer from the Homeland Security Department to scan voting systems for hackers ahead of the presidential elections.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson during an Aug. 15 call with state election officials, offered states DHS services that can inspect voting systems for bugs and other hacker entryways. Earlier in the month, he also suggested the federal government label election systems as official U.S. critical infrastructure, like the power grid.

But some battleground states, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, say they will rely on in-house security crews to maintain the integrity of voter data.

“The question remains whether the federal government will subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security,” Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp told Nextgov in an email. “Designating voting systems or any other election system as critical infrastructure would be a vast federal overreach, the cost of which would not equally improve the security of elections in the United States.”

I fast read the article from your link. I like Georgia’s perspective. Particularly because I’m over 60 and 30 plus years back this healthy and well-informed distrust of the federal government would have gotten the Georgia’s Secretary of State recalled.